A 39-year-old man has been convicted by a French court for praising the actions of radical Islamic terrorists and threatening to kill prison guards while an inmate at a French prison.
The Orleans Correctional Court found 39-year-old Mounir Barkan guilty of praising several terrorists including the Kouachi brothers, who carried out the terrorist attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing a dozen people, in January of 2015.
Barkan, who has already had several convictions for similar offences, made the statements in June and was summoned by the prison manager shortly after making them, regional tabloid La République du Centre reports.
Two guards were forced to subdue him after he threatened to slit the throat of the manager and said “I’m going to tear your eyes out.”
In court, the 39-year-old denied praising terrorism and said that terrorist acts “smeared Islam, it is not good at all.” He added: “I’m not on the side of the terrorists. I didn’t mean it.”
When asked about the death threats, he claimed that he had been given some sort of injection and could not control what he was saying at the time. The court sentenced Barkan to 18 months after finding him guilty.
Radical Islamic terrorism remains a major threat in France, with interior minister Gerald Darmanin reporting earlier this week that as many as 851 illegal migrants were on the country’s Reporting File for the Prevention of Radicalisation of a Terrorist Character (FSPRT).
Darmanin stated that around 180 of the migrants were currently in some form of custody but noted 231 where major risks to security and required deportation.
There are many more such individuals who were either born in France or arrived there via more legitimate routes.
In July, a French Centre for Terrorism Analysis (CAT) study claimed that at least 60 per cent of Islamic radicals who went to fight for terrorist groups abroad between 1986 and 2006 had gone on to commit terrorist offences.
France was set to release over 250 convicted terrorists by 2022, according to a report last year.